The Internet is made up of a collection of disparate computer systems which use a common protocol to communicate with each other. A common use of the Internet is to access World Wide Web pages (webpages). Webpages are typically stored on a web server and may be remotely accessed by a client over the Internet using a web browser.
A website is a collection of webpages. A website typically includes a home page and a hierarchical order of follow-on webpages that are accessible through the home page. The webpages are connected to each other using hypertext links. The hypertext links allow a user to browse webpages of a website by selecting the links between the webpages. Distinct websites may be respectively identified by respective distinct associated Internet domain names.
To increase user visitations and revenue, websites' owners have sought to make their websites become much more sophisticated. Websites typically include webpages that provide information to users, advertise products or services to users, and/or provide site search functions for users. A problem for website owners is determining how successful the website is, for example, whether the informational or other needs of users are being met and whether the users are purchasing advertised goods and services. Websites' owners always explore ways to achieve the goal of increasing their traffic.
One approach to achieving this goal is to check if changing the design of the website, the layout of the website, the content provided by the website, or the content delivery method would attract more users. In the related art, such aspects are checked using multivariate testing. In multivariate testing, different versions of the same webpage are delivered to different users to determine whether users prefer a certain version of that webpage. The users' interactions with the different versions of the same webpage are tracked. This user behavior can be used by the website designers to improve their design, layout, and content for better user experiences or higher conversion rates. Other testing methods include A/B tests and split tests.
In some such testing systems, web servers that receive requests from users to access a webpage re-direct traffic to the different versions of that webpage using persistent information, such as cookies. The webpage version that is delivered to the user is then persistently saved in a user's cookies or tied to a user's cookie identifier. For example, a certain percentage of all traffic to the web server receives each version. In testing systems discussed in the related art, the testing process can be performed on the server side, on the client side, and/or by a third party testing service that the owner configures. In some implementations, the alternative versions occur as redirects to separate webpages, and in other systems, the alternative versions appear as changes to sub-portions of the base page.
In the related art, there are various techniques to modify the code of the webpage to allow for multivariate testing. Further, the testing for one webpage may be different than that of another page. The multivariate tests are typically performed by different service providers. Due to, e.g., data ownership and privacy regulations, a service provider can test multiple different websites, but cannot share the results with persons or companies other than the owners of the websites. Further, different testing providers cannot share the testing results among other testing or service providers.
Consequently, in the related art, there is no existing solution for gathering multivariate tests performed by different testing services. In addition, there is no tool for analyzing multivariate tests performed across different websites. Thus, the ability to evaluate the changes to (or modified version of) a website is limited only to the one site.